More on What Can be Learnt From One Papyrus, and The Problematic History of Papyrology
I sometimes find using papyrological evidence incredibly frustrating. Not because of the nature of the evidence (papyri are often fragmentary and full of holes so you expect that), but because of the way in which earlier papyrologists wrote. The problematic nature of the study of papyri has been under greater scrutiny of late following the issues surrounding the provenance of various new fragments of papyri and questions relating to whether it is appropriate to publish papyri of questionable origin. Others have written far more and far better than I have on these topics. I would recommend reading Roberta Massa's excellent blogs on this topic as a simple starting point. She has written on this topic for over a decade, and many of the recent controversies are addressed by her. However, yesterday I had the fact that the problematic nature of papyrology has its roots in European colonialism metaphorically slap me in the face, and I thought it was worth sharing among other things. On T
